Dior Mathis

This is what Mathis has as his status on Facebook. "Sense I play Defensive Back, the Oregon Ducks impreesed me by having 4 Defensive Backs go in the 1-4th rounds in the NFL draft. I'm offically putting the Ducks on the list; {GO DUCKS}!!!!!!"

So add the ducks to the list of teams michigan has to beat for his service...

No no I am going to say it. He's a teenage impressionable kid who loves the attention he is getting. From everything I've read on him, he is a Neon Deon in the making. Maybe not Neon Deon, but definitely a little prima donnaish.

Maybe my sarcasm-o-meter is malfunctioning. Prima donna is the proper term. Pre- madonna, pre madonna or any other term that uses pre in akin to fore, first, prior, (aka before) is not the correct usage of the word.

Madonna, The virgin Mary. Mother of our Lord and saviour.

Madonna, Pop star, celebrity, one who likes to simulate sexual acts on stage while performing songs in which she talks about, wait for it...sex!!!

Prima, meaning the most important performer or role.

Donna, an Italian woman of rank.

You put these two words together and well you get prima donna...see?

Why am I doing this? I feel like I am making a citizens arrest. I am not part of the Mgoblog police. Oh, WLA why has thou forsaken us?

WHERE IS CHITOWNBLUE, DEX and the rest of WLA. Hell, where is WolvinLA. Someone please, help.

Don't be a dick. The recruits that you and the rest of us so covet don't speak English in the correct form and style. Get used to it. Not everyone gets a top-flight education in elementary/middle/high school.

Yes, I'm a racist. Only, I didn't say anything about race. I said the guys we recruit don't speak the perfect English that you get so damn excited about. I should have said "most of the guys" but whatever, my point remains. Many, many of the top flight guys in the country either come from rough schools, focused mostly on sports during HS, or both. This is how it is, and you can't flip off the handle every time someone speaks less than perfect English. Put your superiority complex aside, please.

Standard English is fine for term papers, but on message boards any comprehensible form of English is fine. Also, when speaking, the rules of grammar are more fluid than when writing.

To deride some of our players for the way they speak falls into the Standard English vs. African-American Vernacular argument. which is an on-going fight in academia right now. African-American Vernacular should be embraced and not belittled. Standard English has been and is used as a form of segregation.

Ebonics has its own rules of syntax and grammar; no one who has researched it will dispute that. The more pressing question is how we get people whose home language is Ebonics to master the rules of standard English, which is the language of mainstream culture. On that there is not yet a consensus.

I love that black slang is now an official language but if some greaseball from the Sopranos opens his yap he just sounds like an idiot. I guess it keeps a lot of white professors employed so maybe it isn't all bad.

None of the other dialects (from Jersey guy to south Boston to South Carolina) get legitimized in the academic community. Ebonics does merely because (some) white people are terrified of appearing racist.

Whether you call it an accent or a dialect (as the poster before me did) you are talking about the same thing (as you said, people speaking the English language in a different way). Also, as the prior poster mentioned, there are hundreds of these accents/dialects used in the US. If you can explain to me how the accent/dialect/slang/language used by people in south Boston or by white people from the deep south are any different from Ebonics (since you claim the first two are just "accents" while the latter is worthy of serious academic study), I'd be happy to hear it. Just talk slowly (seeing as I'm a moron). No need to hurry with a response though, since I'm sure you're very busy patting yourself on the back for not being a racist.

Whether you call it an accent or a dialect (as the poster before me did) you are talking about the same thing (as you said, people speaking the English language in a different way).

Actually, they do not mean the same thing. An "accent" (in the way most people use the term) refers to pronunciation, while a dialect refers to a form of language that has its own distinct vocabulary, pronunciation and/or grammatical rules.

If you can explain to me how the accent/dialect/slang/language used by people in south Boston or by white people from the deep south are any different from Ebonics (since you claim the first two are just "accents" while the latter is worthy of serious academic study), I'd be happy to hear it.

You would be surprised how much research there actually IS on the local dialects of New England, New York, and elsewhere. I'm not sure why you assume they are ignored by linguists. However, it is true that there is more research focused on Ebonics, for the 3 reasons: 1) its origins are somewhat obscure and shrouded by history; 2) it is more divergent from standard American English than just about any other dialect, thus providing more material to study and 3) it is generally spoken by members of a disadvantaged group, who often struggle to master the rules of standard English. How can you teach English to an inner-city kid if you don't understand what he's saying back to you?

Is this really the best forum for nitpicking everyone's grammar. How did we get from a potential recruit to the complete breakdown of ebonics. what next, lessons in Israeli and the different dialects used in the Gaza strip?

My hypotenuse is that you cannot define sin tax or graham her on the Ebonics Languish. Ebonics is just as much about anti-estaminent as it is about a regional dialectic. Braking the rules of graham her and sin tax is as impotent as dropping consonance to make two words sound like one. (aiight?) I could be wrong though, it's just a theorem.